Monday, February 16, 2015

My
foot just hit something at the end of the bed.
Something that growls. I lie
perfectly still and slowly open one eyelid.
There is a circle of black fur there.
The shape of the body and head are unfortunately familiar to me. How the hell did it get in here?

Xandra
shifts in her sleep and I put a hand on her arm, whispering in her ear,
“Xandra, do not move. There is a
Tasmanian devil on our bed.”

The
animal lifts its head and snarls at me.
I am about to use magic to send it flying off the balcony when Xandra
yawns and says, “I know and he wants me to tell you to shut up and to stop
pulling the covers off him. Can we go
back to sleep now?”

My
body becomes rigid again. What did she
just say? She believes the animal talked to her? One of us may be losing our mind, and I do
not believe it is me. Unless Xandra is
still dreaming. “What do you mean ‘he
wants me to shut up’?”

The
animal growls in my direction. I need to
get the thing out of here. Tasmanian
devils are vicious. Once again, I get
ready to zap it with magic. Once again,
Xandra says something that makes me go still.
“No face biting,” she says sleepily.
She stretches her leg out and lightly kicks the animal off the bed.

I am
back to believing she may have gone mad.
“Xandra, what are you talking about?”

“He
wants to bite your face off.”

“Who?”
I ask, though I suspect I already know.
Does she really believe the ugly little thing is talking to her? The Tasmanian devil jumps back onto the bed
and growls at me again.

“Then
who? And do you realize how dangerous
these creatures are. You cannot just
kick them and expect them to go away. They are dangerous.” I cannot stress that enough.

Finally
opening her eyes, Xandra peeks over the covers at the Tasmanian devil who is
now circling around and using its long nails to fluff up the comforter before
lying down again. It is going to tear
the thing to shreds. Once it has a nice
little nest, the damn thing pulls the covers off my feet with its teeth and
wraps itself up in them. This is
bizarre.

Xandra
gives me a sour look. “You’re right,
he’s not going away. He’s going to
sleep. Can we worry about this in the
morning?”

Is
she serious?! “You expect me to sleep with a Tasmanian devil on our bed?”

She
peeks at the creature again. The one now
snoring quietly at the end of the bed.
Okay, this is going beyond bizarre now.
Looking back at me, Xandra says, “Yup.”

She is
actually serious about letting this forest animal remain on our bed. I
am not going to let it sleep on our bed.
Shaking my head in annoyance at my wife’s blasé attitude, I pull
magic. As I have many times in the
forest to other Tasmanian devils, I am going to use it to scare off the dirty
little scavenger.

My
magic stops just short of hitting the creature.
It’s like there’s a wall of magic around it keeping mine at bay. “What the hell?” I mutter. I pull more magic and try to push it through
the Tasmanian devil’s protective wall.
It does not work. “I am not able
to make him move,” I tell Xandra. My
voice must have wakened the ugly little thing because it growls at me once
more.

Xandra’s
response is to kick it off the bed again.
“Xandra, stop doing that. He is
going to attack us,” I hiss. And without
being able to use magic against it, it could actually hurt us.

The
creature leaps back onto the bed and to my great surprise, it starts the
nesting process again. “Obviously not,”
Xandra counters.

I
have had enough. I throw back the covers
and stand up. Quickly covering the
forest scavenger with the comforter, I scoop it off the bed. It begins to behave as Tasmanian devils do,
it snarls and scratches, trying to free itself and attack me in the process. Fortunately, I have long arms and can hold it
far enough away I do not need to fear its teeth or claws.

Xandra
sits up. “What are you going to do with
him?”

“I
will set him free outside.” The beast
continues to growl in its cocoon.

To
my consternation, Xandra asks the creature, “Why do you want to stay here?” She
cannot still be sleep addled enough to believe it will answer her.

The
devil responds with a growl. For some
reason, Xandra flings her own magic at it.
Angry, annoyed magic that gets past whatever was blocking mine. The comforter twists in my hands, wrapping
the Tasmanian devil even tighter than before and she silences its
growling. Nonplussed, I ask, “Suddenly
you are concerned about him attacking us?”

“No,”
Xandra replies. “He called me a twit.”

It
could be a spell. Please let it be a
spell. I concentrate on the room for a
second, trying to sense any foreign magic residue. Nothing.
My words are slow and even as I ask, “How could he call you a twit? These animals do not have the capability of
speech. Nor reason.”

If she is not under
a spell, what else could it be? Did
fighting Belial in Egypt do something to her brain? If that was the case, would she not have
shown symptoms sooner?

Xandra
cocks her head to the side with her brow crinkled. “You can’t hear him talk?”

The
better question is, “You can?”

She
nods. “Yes. He says he’s my Familiar.”

There
is definitely something wrong here. I
let the Tasmanian devil fall to the floor with a thump. “A Familiar?” I ask, hoping she
misspoke. Please do not let my wife be
crazy.

Xandra’s
brow scrunches tighter. “Yes, a
Familiar.”

No,
no, no. “As in an animal meant to assist
you in performing magic and to do your bidding?”

Annoyed
again, she snarks, “Yeah, that’s what a Familiar does.”

That
is not what Familiars do because there is no such thing as Familiars. “Xandra, Witches having Familiars is
folklore.”

Her
eyes drop to the sack of Tasmanian devil on the ground and then rise back up to
meet mine. Pointing at the creature, she
asks, “Then how do you explain him?”

Please,
please let it be a spell. If Xandra is
under a spell, she can be cured. If she
is simply crazy, there may not be a way to fix it. Using the evenest voice I can manage at the
moment, I explain. “He is simply a wild
animal that has wandered into the house.”
Please, my love, understand this to be truth.

She
does not take my words as truth.
Instead, she becomes defensive.
And loud. “Really?! And he just happened to go up a flight of
stairs and choose our room and then randomly decided to call himself my
Familiar so he could stay?”

The
only thing I can think to say in response is, “Are you well?”

“Yes,”
she snaps.

“Yet
you believe this creature,” I point to the thing on the floor, “speaks to you?”

“I
don’t believe it, he does!”

I
cannot help but smirk at her poor choice of words. But it passes quickly. It is time to get help. “Maybe we should wake Tabitha, have her check
you over.”

“Kallen,
stop implying that I’m crazy! The stupid
thing talks to me!” Xandra practically screeches. Like it usually does, magic begins to flow
into Xandra as her feelings of agitation grow.

Getting
off the bed, she stands with her arms crossed over her chest. “Why can’t you just believe me? Weird things happen to me every day. You know what, fine, let’s go wake the whole
house up because you don’t believe I have a Familiar.” She turns and stomps toward the bedroom door.

I am
not handling this situation well at all.
Xandra feels like I am attacking her when all I want to do is help
her. I need to fix this. Moving quickly, I put myself in her path and
put my hands on her shoulders. “I am
just worried,” I say softly. “I did not
intend to make you angry, but there is something going on here that is not
right.”

Xandra
does not want to argue, I can see it in her eyes. But my words are simply not enough to calm
her at this point. She attempts a small,
tight smile but the glare on the rest of her face makes the smile moot. Stepping around me, Xandra walks to the door
and opens it, determined to prove to me she is right and I am wrong. I really wish that could be true. Using my ability to send telepathic messages,
I wake everyone else and ask them to meet us in the kitchen.